The physician of the future: More like da Vinci

Which skills and qualities should typify the physician of the future? Answering this question is crucial for medical schools, especially given the many forces acting on medical education, including health care funding, the impact of technology and evolving patient users. According to one expert, the answer is clear but also complex: The physician of the future will need to be a little bit of everything. Meg Gaines, JD, LLM, is a distinguished clinical professor of law at the University of Wisconsin –Madison. She is also a co-founder ofThe Center for Patient Partnerships, which trains students from the schools of Law, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Social Work to provide advocacy to cancer patients and conducts research on issues relevant to patient care and health care delivery from the patient perspective. At a recent meeting of the AMA ’sAccelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium in Chicago, she described the physician of the future from her perspective as an interprofessional team member.“Patients will need their doctors to be advocates,” Gaines said. And partnering, she explained, will be the key to fulfilling that role.“[It’s] the vital 21st century skill, ” she said. “For practicing professionals, I think we need to be even more Leonardo da Vinci than we have been before, crossing the professional boundaries, being a little bit lawyers, a little bit doctors, a little bit nurses, a little bit social workers.” Collaboration is already requi...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news